YMMV / Balan Wonderworld

• Angst? What Angst?: The novel tones this down by having the characters talk about their problems instead of everyone dancing after a boss, but, in the video game, beating the secondary human characters' monstrous boss forms causes all of them to suddenly have the strength to face and overcome any trauma or internal turmoil they had, regardless of how severe the trauma or turmoil may have appeared.
• Awesome Art: The art style and character designs are wonderful to look at, especially in the cutscenes.
• Awesome Music: Given the game is helmed by the co-creators of Sonic the Hedgehog and NiGHTS into Dreams…, it should come to no one’s surprise that the soundtrack is simply wonderful.
  • Corn for Days (Chapter 1's theme) is a catchy and calm theme perfectly suitable of the first chapter’s peaceful vibes.
  • Balan’s Bout is a joyous big band track that perfectly fits Balan’s bombastic and playful nature.
  • Windswept Plains is an outright Majestic theme to accompany your journey into the skies of chapter 4, or just gaze out upon a great view with.
  • Inkblot Maze is a simpler melody that still manages to be mysterious and exotic as you trek through the winding, twisting funhouse that is chapter 10, which is also considered to be the game's best level.
  • The musical numbers that play at the end of every chapter may border on Narm or Narm Charm for some, especially the unlockable English translations and the fact that there are only four in total but all of them manage to be seriously catchy tracks that wouldn't sound out of place among modern day showtunes. It helps that all of them are performed by Laura Pitt-Pulford, a professional stage actress and singer known for her work in musical theater.
  • Although it does experience a lot of overplay during the course of the game a-la the Werehog Battle Theme, Dance of the Negati combines bagpipes, horns and violins with a pounding percussion backed by Ominous Latin Chanting and a One-Woman Wail to make a track that manages to sound both dangerous and playful.
• Bile Fascination: People now mostly look into the game to see how it ended up so heavily criticized after being highly anticipated previously, mostly in regards to its questionable design choices.
• Broken Base: The revelation that the game was released far before it was ready created two camps. Some people believed that the game would've turned out significantly better if it was given more time in the oven. Others argued that more development time would've only gone so far, as many of the game’s flaws (such as the levels being designed around the one button control scheme and costume system) are baked in.
• Common Knowledge: It's often believed that you have to get a perfect score in the non-Balan's Bouts minigames if you want to earn a trophy for them. Fortunately, that's not the case, as a perfect score will simply just give you more drops instead.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game:
  • While the gameplay is middling at best and genuinely bad at worst, something everyone seems to agree on is that the CGI cutscenes are excellent, and the short but sad backstories behind the bosses are good at getting sympathy. Some have gone as far as to say Naka should have just made an animated movie.
  • It's generally agreed by those who have read the book that it has a much better story than the game itself, as not only does it tell more about Balan, Lance, and Wonderworld, but it also fleshes out Emma, Leo, and the other humans, which is quite jarring compared to the game, which didn't have that much of a story. In fact, many recommend that people interested in the game's premise just buy the novel instead. It helps that it's much cheaper and costs $10 (albeit digital only), when the game originally costed $60 before it was permanently slashed to $40.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Farmer, Jose, has become this thanks to a combination of Memetic Mutation crossing over with Sneedposting and Memetic Badass because of the title of his chapter being "The Man Who Rages Against the Storm".
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending of the game is all fine and good, with everyone leaving Wonderworld happy with their dilemmas solved... except we completely failed to save Lance, and no one seems to remember. The novel also ends with Balan being hit with a (possibly unintentional) Breaking Speech from Lance, warning him his love of humans will ultimately lead to his downfall and there's nothing he can do about it. That's the last we see of those two.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Many mistakenly refer to the game as "Balan Wonderland", mostly because English speakers are much more accustomed to the phrase "Wonderland" and that the name arguably rolls off the tongue more smoothly than the official title.
  • Thanks to the demo playthrough done by Penny of SnapCube, Jose Gallard is frequently called "Farmer Ted".
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why do the bosses have the powers of the different costumes of each world? Because the creatures that inhabit each world are the creations of the traumatized humans, representing their hopes and fears.
  • In regarding the bosses, Cass doesn't take the form of, say, a car, she takes the form of a cat with a clock in her... because she hasn't been able to move past the moment of the traffic accident with her pet. It could also represent her desire to literally turn back the clock and change what happened.
    • The Nega Bosses themselves, typically taking on elements of the event that caused the Victim of the Week so much grief and being stated as having no memory of themselves in that moment, seem representative of a very real fear for those who have suffered forms of psychological trauma. Mainly, that they will lash out at others during an episode where the trauma resurfaces. Fighting the Nega Boss helps the victims calm down in a safer environment until they can gather themselves and be properly reassured.
  • It's demonstrated that if people are pushed past the brink and attacked by the Negati, they turn into Nega Bosses and lose themselves to their grief. In that way, Lance is Balan's Nega Boss. He is Balan, pushed past the brink of despair and warped into a nightmarish visage that borrows design elements the creatures that represent the moment he lost himself; the Negati.
  • The costumes featured in this promotional artwork◊ are chosen deliberately - they're the signature costumes for each of the game's 12 Inhabitants!
• Funny Moments: Box Fox, a costume that exists in a corner off on its own. It allows the user to become a fox mage that turns into a box "when it feels like it." The space you obtain it from is designed so that if you leave it on and don't stand still and wait for it to change to get a feel for the timing, you'll turn into a box on the way back through the portal, slide down a ramp and into a Bottomless Pit. It'd be frustrating if it weren't seemingly designed to have as little consequence as possible.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The bubble blower outfit and its bubble summoning ability in Chapter 2 is not particularly special in single player, but as Johnny of SomecallmeJohnny points out in his review of the game, it's a very different story in co-op mode. If two players both get the bubble blower outfit, they can each summon a bubble back to back, and given the lack of cooldown period between bubbles, this can allow the two players to summon bubbles endlessly, allowing them to fly and outright skip over large portions of the levels.
  • The Frost Fairy costume obtained in Chapter 8 lets you take seven steps upwards in air, and can be used to obtain almost any trophy.
• Genius Bonus: Attilio is referred to as "Pensive Pierrot." Pierrot is a clown character from Commedia dell'Arte who has an unrequited love for someone, usually Colombina. Attilio is afraid the princess will show him just about as much affection as Colombina does to Pierrot.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The ending. As Leo and Emma leave the park, they give Balan a group hug, during which Balan sheds a Single Tear and takes off his hat. Afterwards, Leo makes up with his friends, and Emma learns that the maids who she thought were badmouthing her were actually planning a surprise birthday party for her.
  • The credits. All the victims that Leo and Emma save have become good friends. One particularly sweet moment shows some of them admiring Iben's baby. And in the end, Leo and Emma meet again and celebrate their reunion alongside the other characters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: As noted below, this game was accused of ripping off Elmer Bernstein's Ghostbusters theme. The year wasn't even over before Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out. Even funnier is that that film had a redone version of the song in it.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Many were attracted to the game just for the reunion of two of Sonic's co-creators: programmer Yuji Naka and artist Naoto Ohshima.
  • As for the contents of the game itself, even many detractors for the game have expressed how much they like Balan himself (whether it be due to his design or the idea of his character), even if they like nothing else in the game, wishing he had a more prominent role in it - or even that he were the main character instead - and citing him as one of the game's true positives. Especially since he is the closest thing to a proper Creator-Driven Successor to NiGHTS as a character.
• Memetic Badass: Thanks to a mixture of Snapcube's reaction to the farmer's dance, the Sneed's Feed and Seed meme and the surprisingly epic name of "The Man Who Rages Against The Storm", Jose Gallard has been getting this treatment, being portrayed as a very powerful farmer determined to grow his farm◊ that can take on Vergil.
• Memetic Molester: The "evil dolphin" in Fiona's cutscene was meant to be how Fiona's memories and trauma made her see the dolphin in a more antagonistic light. Players, however, are fully convinced the dolphin really was evil, with many joking about the uglier truth of IRL dolphin behavior.^noteFor those not in the know, dolphins are notorious for their aggressive sexual urges and have a reputation of attempting to rape divers and drowning one another while practicing blowhole sex. Unsurprisingly, many players latched on to the idea humorously, saying that the dolphin merely trying to "drown" her could have been way worse.
• Moe: The Tims, fluffy little Waddling Heads who follow the player around and are literally made of positive energy.
• Narm:
  • While the scene before Chapter 2's boss fight tries to play off the idea of Fiona's trauma unintentionally scapegoating an innocent dolphin, the shot of her descending into the abyss while the dolphin glares down at her with evil red eyes just produces an unintentional hint of Black Comedy and has made the dolphin a bit of a Memetic Psychopath among players.
  • Similarly, just before the Chapter 7 fight, Cal's backstory only shows him losing a game of chess once and falling into a despair-induced rage immediately afterwards, completely omitting the part of his backstory from the book where his constant losing streak made him ignore his dying wife until it was too late, resulting in new players believing his despair over losing one game of chess was equal to something along the lines of dead parents. Made all the funnier when taken out of context after he beats a kid and feels better about himself, earning the story ridicule.
• Narm Charm: Characters wear goofy costumes rather than actually transform into the creature that gives them power. Little neon baby chicks called Tims follow you everywhere and help you fight and explore. The climax of a level is a big dance party, which gives the person that level is based on the strength to face their problems outside of the dream world.
• Nausea Fuel: A few specific levels ^note notably, one of these levels includes the first levels in the game include an unusual visual effect where the world visibly bends and warps based around where the camera is, which has caused motion sickness for some people.
• Never Live It Down: The cutscene with Fiona in Chapter 2, showing the dolphin knocking out Fiona's air tank (or yanking it out in the novel) before staring at her with demonic eyes as she seemingly drowns. Due to how immensely jarring this moment is, many players interpret the dolphin as being intentionally malicious, which isn't too far-fetched considering that dolphins can be very aggressive in real life. The game heavily implies later on that the dolphin never intended to hurt Fiona on purpose, and the whole scene of the "evil" dolphin is actually Fiona's memory of the event twisted by grief after she nearly drowned.
• Obvious Beta: Several elements of the game are unfinished, with numerous pieces of unimplemented content, like the tutorial, with the game getting minimal patches after release, and only due to a seizure warning. Yuji Naka even revealed that Square Enix had him fired when he found out they were planning to release the unfinished version.
• Porting Disaster: The Nintendo Switch port has been noted to have massive performance problems that, combined with the downgraded visuals and gameplay, drag the game down to near-unplayable levels. According to one of the developers, this might be because of the Switch's hardware.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Every button on the controller has the same action tied to it at any given time. In the player characters' base, non-costumed forms, this action is jumping, but any costumes that give the player an attack, such as Dainty Dragon, Sickle Slinger, or Pumpkin Puncher will replace the jump button with their respective attack, leaving the player unable to jump. Since the player is unable to remove their costumes at will, if they are stuck with only costumes that take away their jump, it can become impossible to progress. Even the menus use this design, with every button functioning as a select button, meaning players have to scroll down to a back button to leave the menu instead of having a controller button dedicated to the function.
  • Costumes can only be collected after the player collects a key to open the crystal containing the costume, and this applies to every costume in the game. ^note The sole exception to this is the Key Mouse, but even then, that still requires a key itself or yet another Key Mouse to obtain, and you'll still have to be wearing it to be able to open the crystals. Most of the time the keys are in close proximity to the costumes and respawn, which makes this mechanic feel like an unnecessary extra step.
  • You can hold three costumes at a time, and every time you collect a costume, the costume in the third slot gets replaced by the new one. However, the game doesn't stack a costume you already collected, meaning if you collect a costume you already own, it will take up another slot in the costume select. This can potentially cause problems if you lose a costume you needed to navigate the stage.
  • The Balan's Bout minigame only rewards the player with a trophy if they get a perfect score on every single one of the Quick Time Events. If the player fails to win the trophy, the only way to get another chance is to leave the stage completely and find the golden Balan hat all over again. There are many of these bouts throughout the game that only get longer over time, making the extra repetition even more frustrating. These bouts are also the only time the titular Balan is playable, which disappointed many fans who wanted Balan to be more involved in this platformer title.
  • Some of the statues require a certain costume that's not available in the world you're in. This requires you to either backtrack to the nearest save point to change it in the wardrobe there or go to that world to get it. It should be noted you can have more than one in the wardrobe, meaning stocking up on them can be done to alleviate this.
  • Certain costumes have powers that activate "when it feels like" rather than being tied to a button press. This can lead to scenarios such as randomly transforming into a sliding box while running around narrow walkways over a bottomless pit.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Farmer's dance montage at the end of the first chapter is generally the one most remembered, as it's the first time when the game truly shows its hand and when players (most commonly those Let's Playing and recording it) start to realize what exactly they're in for.
  • Gameplay-wise, the introduction of the Box Fox would be the first real taste of the more absurd costume powers featured in the game.
  • Fiona and the dolphin, given all the memetic attention Alpharad had given it.
• Special Effect Failure: The game has what can only be called negative draw distance, where the characters vanish the closer you get to them. The novel implies that they are illusions, as there are moments when Leo tries to go towards certain characters only for them to disappear into thin air. Given that there's nothing in the game explaining this, you'd be forgiven for finding this odd or chalking it up to a glitch.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • As videogamedunkey noted, the chapter 1 theme is almost identical to the main theme of Super Mario Odyssey.
  • The chapter 11 theme sounds quite similar to the Ghostbusters theme by Elmer Bernstein.
  • The beginning of Wormsworth's theme sounds like the beginning of Symphony No 9 (From the New World), Movement 4 by Antonín Dvořák.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Despite trailers and previews focusing exclusively on the puzzle-based platforming and costume upgrades, the game's demo quickly raised concerns. Players were disappointed with the slow movement speed and the fact that every button (save for the shoulder buttons, which are used to switch costumes) is mapped to the same action even in menus, which made it so that each costume has only one ability. The costumes with abilities that don't involve jumping drew particular ire, as those costumes force the player to remain grounded when using them. There were also complaints about poor framerates, blurry textures (both of which are exacerbated on the Nintendo Switch version), UV mapping issues, and several other things that hamper the experience.
  • Prior to the demo, some fans were already wary of Naoto Oshima's Arzest being involved as the main developers for the game, seeing as they were responsible for making games of middling quality, particularly in the Yoshi's Island and Pikmin series.
  • Some fans were even wary of Yuji Naka's own involvement with this game. While some fans were grateful to see him working with Square Enix to create a Creator-Driven Successor to a classic and beloved Sega franchise in NiGHTS into Dreams…, other fans believed that he was at his best when he was still working at Sega and Sonic Team, and that his post-Sonic Team ventures have mostly consisted of outdated ideas and gameplay for modern games, which has ended up being a large criticism with Balan Wonderworld.
  • The aforementioned issue with the first levels - and the first playable section demo players are exposed to - having an effect that caused motion sickness understandably turned off affected players from even finishing the demo and writing the game off entirely.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!:
  • Many have pointed out that Cuckoo, the Chapter 5 boss, looks very similar to Stu, a boss from Donkey Kong Country Returns.
  • Others have stated that the theme to Chapter 11, Subterranean Heat, is alarmingly similar to one of the themes for Ghostbusters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many players were incredibly disappointed that Balan himself is only "playable" through bonus stages that are essentially nothing but a series of quick-time events, with his appearances outside of the bonus stages being largely limited to the cutscenes. Some have even expressed a preference to have him as the main playable character instead of Leo and Emma or wished that he had been integrated into the gameplay more, especially since they were largely interested in the game because of him.
  • Lance, the main antagonist. He has a pretty cool design, and the novel reveals that he's the original Balan and created the current Balan to balance out the negativity that had overcome Lance, so this could've led to some interesting in-game interactions between Balan and Lance. But this is never brought up or hinted at in the game, so Lance just ends up as a generic threat. The game doesn't even mention his name until the latter portions of the story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: People who know of the story through the novel or by searching online often feel the in-game's presentation of this story is severely lacking.
• Uncertain Audience: A lot of Yuji Naka's comments regarding design decisions (such as the one-button gameplay, the simplistic level design, the lack of dialogue in the game proper, etc.) point towards this game being aimed at small children. On the other hand, tutorial dialogue being Dummied Out, certain features requiring a guide in order to unlock them, the story needing a novel in order to comprehend it, and virtual lack of advertising (instead letting Yuji Naka and Square Enix's name recognition do most of the talking) point more towards this being a game for older players that grew up in the Fourth^note Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Fifth^note Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Saturn Generations of Gaming.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Balan's true appearance without his hat. Rather than keeping his majestic dreadlocks and dark face with a big, cheerful grin, instead he just looks like a normal, very pale human with a far more plain hairstyle. You'd be forgiven for thinking he had someone else's head stapled onto his neck. The same applies to Lance.
• Viewer Species Confusion: Based on Anjellica's Japanese name (Jelly Dolphin), she seems to have been intended to be a cross between a dolphin and a jellyfish (more specifically, she's a combination of the Dynamic Dolphin and Jellyjolt costumes). But she has some traits, such as her frilled fins and sharp teeth, that make this difficult to tell. YouTuber LS Mark even calls Anjellica an octopus, and calls the game out for not making Anjellica a dolphin, when technically, it did.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Most also agree that the in-game visuals are quite nice and well done on every port except the Nintendo Switch. The opening cinematic, where Balan meets the player characters, in particular seems to get the most praise.
• The Woobie: Every human inhabitant that becomes a Nega Boss is this, as they fall into a realistic Despair Event Horizon, some of which are brought about by pure circumstance. They become Iron Woobies after their Nega Boss is defeated, as they overcome said despair and move on.

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